In 2016 Evangelicals debated about the best way to affirm that God is one and yet Father and Son. The old answer is: the Father begets the Son eternally; the Son is eternally begotten. Beget and begotten are old words to describe how fathers generate children. A mother births them; a father begets.
In recent years, evangelicals attempted to find a new way to talk about Father and Son. They said that the Father relates to the Son because he has paternal authority; the Son relates to the Father in a mode of submission. Authority and submission distinguish Father and Son.
For the most part, people found the new approach insufficient. It implied eternal inferiority of the Son, implied two wills, and inserted the human life of Jesus where he obeyed the Father into God. It unintentionally implied a creaturely characteristic in God since Jesus’s creaturely obedience to the Father gets imported into how God is eternally!
Recently, however, a theologian reaffirmed that the Father eternally has authority over the eternally submissive Son. Interestingly, the theologian cited Augustine and Hilary of Poitiers as proponents of his position.
Two reasons why eternal submission does not work
First, Jesus submits to the Father in his role of Mediator, one who became obedient to the point of death in the form of a slave (Phil 2:7). But he was equal to the Father in the form of deity (Phil 2:6).
To transfer submission into God as the way the Father and Son differ is to transfer a creaturely characteristic into God. Because Jesus took on humanity, he obeys the Father vicariously in his role of Mediator for our sake.
Second, the church Fathers such as Augustine and Hilary made the above distinction clearly. They affirmed the obedience of the Son according to his humanity. But they did not pass through this obedience into God to explain how the Son and Father eternally related.
Just one example. Augustine in The Trinity writes: “In the form of a servant which he took he is the Father’s inferior; in the form of God in which he existed even before he took this other he is the Father’s equal.” Elsewhere, he says “the Father is greater than is the form of the servant, whereas the Son is his equal in the form of God.”[1]
This logic undergirds how Augustine and others understand the scriptural passages where Christ submits to the Father or is understood to be less than the Father in some sense.
There is no need to illustrate this point further.[2] It is a patristic commonplace to say that the Son is inferior according to humanity; equal according to divinity. As the Athanasian Creed says, “equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity.” Christ obeyed according to his humanity. He shares one will and equality according to his divinity.
Arianism
No, it is not Arianism. Arius may have maintained that Christ was divine, but he also affirmed that the Father alone was unoriginate. The Father somehow made the Son by his will to create the cosmos. The implication, however, was clear. This in effect made the Son into a creature, one not sharing the single nature of the one God.
In 357, the so-called Blasphemy of Sirmium (a regional council) described the Son in this way: “And no one is ignorant, that it is catholic doctrine, that there are two persons of Father and Son, and that the Father is greater, and the Son subordinated to the Father together with all things which the Father has subordinated to Him.”
The theologian that I have mentioned does not affirm Arianism. He affirms Nicene notions of Father and Son sharing one essence. Yet he writes: “I believe based on numerous texts that the Son eternally submits to the Father. The duty of submission in the biblical mind does not signal a diminished ontology. It communicates a distinctiveness of person. The Son as Son submits to the Father; the Father as Father is head of the Son.”
In other words, the distinct property of the Son is submission; the distinct property of the Father is headship or authority. That is how we can distinguish persons in the one God. One has authority; one submits.
It is not Arianism, yet such a view still transfers the human obedience of Christ into the nature of God. God by nature has authority and submits in himself, or so the argument goes. But since God has one nature, so one will, that notion internally contracts itself. As William Perkins, the father of Puritanism, says, “because as they are all one in nature, so are they all one in will.” Hence, “[T]he decree of the Father is the decree of the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
One decree. One will. There is not a decree from the authoritative one and submission among the submissive one. One will means God is not divided. It means that Jesus’s genuine human will obeys God in all things for our sake. But his divine will is the one will of God always. There is no sense in which the one God can submit to himself—at least in any way like we can conceive of it. Jesus submits to the Father.
Transferring human obedience, creaturely obedience, into the life of God implies his creaturehood. That implication must be rejected. As the Bible tells us and consent of the church has confirmed, the Father and Son are distinguished by Fatherness and Sonness. Their relation is one of Fatherness and Sonness.
That’s about it. It is a mystery, one which we breach when we import human categories into God.
[1] See The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle, 2nd ed. (New York: New City Press, 1991), 77, 78.
[2] Although I might want to show how Hilary rejected the Arian idea that Father and Son unite around a relation of will. He denies that because the Father and Son relate by eternal generation. Like Augustine too, Hilary affirms, “The obedience unto death is not in the form of God, just as the form of God is not in the form of a slave” (The Trinity 9.14).
John 10:30 — is a clear uncomplicated statement — I and the Father are One… notwithstanding the Greek, “Hen” in the neuter.
Clear statements such as this one, are to be taken literally; and the ones seemingly suggesting some sort of inferiority are to be reckoned in light of the infallibility of the Son — so I have always approached them.
“To transfer submission into God as the way the Father and Son differ is to transfer a creaturely characteristic into God”.
“Because Jesus took on humanity, he obeys the Father vicariously in his role of Mediator for our sake. ” And it’s as simple as that.
In my opinion, it appears that those theologians were often not looking beyond their own humanity — not willing to let go of their own perfect’ infallible logic which undoubtedly required some faith and discernment. Fortunately, the thief on the cross was completely, ‘discernibly’ (1 Cor. 12:10) submissive and therefore given ‘eyes to see’ — an unfettered vision of his awakening in the very last minute.
“In 357, the so-called Blasphemy of Sirmium…” So-called, yes, because it appears more a misunderstanding than deliberate blasphemy.
God submitting to Himself is ridiculous because it appears to imply that there is a further division between the Father and the Father — which doesn’t parallel the difference between the Father and the Son without stumbling even if dragged a bit by the cursed flesh — Who performed God’s will to the flawless death, suffering for all who would be saved. The Holy Spirit is equal because — who can do God’s will (John 16…) perfectly, flawlessly but God?!
I firmly believe the best analysis will include thoughtful prayerful faith as well as hard study. If one is troubled by his analysis we can go over it again until it lies consistently with a perfect God.
Great article Wyatt. You have a knack for making complex theological issues accessible to pastors and teachers who may have studied more generally. I’m sure many will find this useful.
Thanks, Paul! That’s kind of you to say.
“They said that the Father relates to the Son because he has paternal authority; the Son relates to the Father in a mode of submission. Authority and submission distinguish Father and Son.”
Wyatt, I would say, the underpinning of this kind of thinking seems to be a fleshy mind — which was just a momentary phenomenon for our sake. The Son is effectively eternal — the Father’s bestowal…which is realized in the equality of the Son. Paul wouldn’t think such things because he was taken beyond the gap.
2 Corinthians 5:10:
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”
Philippians 2:6: “…Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped…”
So many passages report realities that are impossible to dismiss when it comes to the equality of the Father and the Son —
2 Corinthians 3:3
being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Philippians 3:3:
for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh…
We go by the rudiment:
“But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation…”
Genesis 1:2
The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
You know all the rest…
Needless to say, Wyatt — I appreciate you bringing these ideas that have gained theological respect throughout antiquity; it confirms a lot of the things.
Opposition to the concept of eternal submission of the Son to the Father appears to me to come from a projection of a trait of fallen, sinful mankind onto the Godhead.
Submission of the Son to the Father has occurred, at great cost to the Son. Why?
1. Does anyone think that the Father ever had to “pull rank” or otherwise coercively subdue the Son?
2. Can submission of a son to a father occur only to the exclusion of unity and shared will?
I note that my mind, eyes and hands are so often in perfect, willing, harmonious submission to my stomach that maybe I aught to change something…
Therefore, submission, when it is implied that it only occurs in the context of competing interests, antagonism, or conquest, is improperly understood. This implication is improper because the goodness of submission as an attribute of the relationship within the Godhead is necessarily subordinated and lost within the context of a fallen, sinful mankind. And I know my Savior did nothing that wasn’t good.
By the way, the father of lies bequeathed a blasphemous view of submission to mankind via his prophet Mohammed. Let’s not participate or aid and abet in any way in that blasphemy.
Men and women, dead in trespasses and sin, engage in submission to superiors like this:
A. Willingly, even joyfully, submit to evil
B. Submit to good, when forced
Our Lord Jesus, God the Son, did the opposite without fail.
Unlike Adam and Jonah, who showed they would choose their own death to ensure the death of another rather than live OR die to offer life to another, Christ suffered humiliation (which he evidently bears into eternity), but as God the Son, sinless, having redeemed His people, he bears humility triumphantly!
Jesus “[submitted to evil], when forced”
He only submitted to evil in the context of His voluntary condescension to us, where that condescension had the purpose of redeeming His people and gathering them to Himself and to the Father, and they are eternally united in that purpose.
I think that is why Augustine says what he says, without diminishing the submission of the Son or the perfection of the unity of the Trinity.